Managing illegal trails and routes
Many destinations suffer from the consequences of mountain bikers traveling on unauthorized trails and hiking trails. It is important to understand the conflicts that can arise and distinguish between illegal trails (i.e. trails that are built or used illegally, and trails that are allowed to be used by law) and multi-use trails for mountain bikers and hikers as well as horseback riders on trails, ski tourers on ski trails, or pedestrians on cross-country ski trails.
Illegal trails
Illegal trails are considered to be all trails carved by bikers riding on private land. Property damage occurs when new trails are constructed unless a path is already available.
Violations
There are state and regional legal regulations where the use of an area or the use of trails is restricted. Regulations can also vary in individual countries. For example, in Austria, it is forbidden to ride on trails with a mountain bike where it is not expressly permitted.
In Germany, this legal situation is unfortunately also different in each federal state or “Bundesländer.” The DIMB (German Initiative Mountainbike) advocates the release of trails for bikers and has created an overview (in German only).
Posted regulations of protected areas (there are about 26,000 protected areas in Germany alone) can help to define local rules in the respective area, what is allowed in the area and what is not. Often these include trail bans for hikers and driving bans for mountain bikers.
Multi-use trail conflicts
By far, the majority of discussions revolve around conflicts on trails that are allowed by law for biking. This is often where conflicts arise with hikers, conservationists, hunters, foresters, and property owners.
What can DMOs do?
The greatest potential for avoiding conflict lies in creating a good offer for mountain bikers. Unfortunately, far too many DMO’s still behave passively and disregard mountain bike trails designation as trail networks and as tour suggestions. Bikers must be offered attractive trails (not forest trails) to avoid conflicts – away from the heavily used hiking trails. The trail network should also be available digitally in map applications as well as properly marked and signposted in nature. On this basis, attractive tour suggestions can also be identified and offered as landing pages for the destination and promoted online.
Digitization of local rules
If there are legal regulations and statutes in protected areas, these should be urgently digitized. Internet platforms such as Outdooractive are happy to show users whether a planned tour is legal or not, but this requires the rules to be digitalized in a standardized and structured form. To create the rules as an open data set, the non-profit association “Digitize the Planet e.V.” was founded in early 2020.
The rules will be made available to all platforms as open data. On Outdooractive, all protected areas are already integrated and all rules are communicated in this way during tour planning.
Display of prohibitions
On Outdooractive, prohibitions are also displayed on the map, separated according to the respective activities. For example, here are trails that are prohibited for mountain bikers:
What to do if prohibited routes are published?
At Outdooractive, there is a service department that is specifically responsible for looking after the community. This department also takes care of all complaints about illegal content, from copyright infringement to immoral content to banning mountain bikers & co. Please report all violations at service@outdooractive.com.